This post, like everything else in my life, is me arriving late. When everyone else is aware of something except me, who holds the title of the designated idiot in the room.

I read this post about two nights back — I have had a run of insomnia and I am not sure how this post appeared on my feed.

How do you read this sort of post without your life changing?

Without your soul shifting — in one way or another?

How do you read this post and not sit there and consider, that you just DO NOT have any words.

No words to express the pain or to add comfort to a situation that is so painful that there just are not words in the English language that you could use? That work. That …. that are.

I read this post in contemplative silence. I then got to the end and sat there and stared at it and realised that there wasn’t some magic ending.

There was no “Come to Jesus” moment or a “not a surprise this always happens” American movie ending where the hero sweeps in to save the day, to the soundtrack of some powerful music — there was just a family destroyed. No movie. No nightmare to wake up from.

A life cruelly taken. And nothing made sense. Not to me.

Nothing.

I am agnostic, at best. I cannot take comfort in religion — how do you find comfort here?? If the higher power took this child, how do you sit and say this higher power has a purpose for this child being taken??

Why could the higher power maybe not have just not taken this little boy, and maybe all the other little boys and girls — why do we have a higher power who does this?

Why this little boy — why so cruelly snatched away? I do not understand. My brain cannot comprehend or hold this thought.

{I hope Jane Fraser does not mind me using this image of her son —- her Natey}

How is this part of a plan of some mystical imaginary higher power?

How do I sit here, as a parent, and not wonder what if this was one of mine?

What if this was one of yours?

I have no words.

I have no words of comfort.

I have no words that can sooth the pain this family must be feeling. I do not have words that can even comprehend this level of pain.

Why is there not a word in the English language for a parent who has lost a child?

I have no words that can explain why something like this would happen?

I have no words that I can use to explain in my head how and why this happens — and how we as parents can live through this loss. Tell me how?

I have no words that can even touch on the pain – that can make it less tender, that can make it somehow less.

I have no words for Jane.

I have no words for her family.

I have no words for Natey.

I have no words for me. Or you.

Read the story — hold your children a bit closer. Put your face against their heads and smell their hair. Avoid the urge to tell them to go and wash it — just smell them.

When they are fighting over the stupid things that children do — just smile, and count yourself as lucky.

Last night I had Isabelle with me — I had some medication to force me to sleep. I was doing a 3 – 4 day run of not sleeping properly. And I was at that point where reality starts to blur from insomnia and I was ready to sell my soul for sleep. Or a donut.

Isabelle lay on my shoulder – she was sleeping in my bed. I had put the lights off, it was 20h15. I was searching through my podcasts for a story she may enjoy, which she could fall asleep to — it was still light outside, but she understood mom was tired and needed an early night.

I felt the weight of her. I felt that warm hot musty breath that only young children have — I realised she had fallen asleep nestled against me. On my shoulder. Her body a little sweaty. Her long eyelashes on her cheeks.

I thought of Jane and Natey —- I didn’t cry. I closed my eyes and just breathed my child in. Counted my luck/blessings/the twists of fate that made this moment possible.

I fell asleep with the weight of her against my shoulder and her presence against my skin.

Today I am crying.

My guess is tomorrow I will cry a bit more.

{I really hope Jane Fraser does not take offense that Natey has become the collective Natey to a lot of people. I did not know this little boy — I was not that fortunate. But there is a part of him somewhere in my spirit — somewhere in my consciousness he holds a space — he is there — I can’t explain it.}

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